by Lisa Preston
The stretcher’s load was in a zipped-shut orange body bag.
Oscar raised his right hand and pinched at the air near his forehead. Then he shook himself with some sort of realization and I guessed he’d been about to remove his hat out of respect for the cargo on the police stretcher. We stood in silence as they loaded it into the hearse, which apparently had a driver waiting inside. Then Ponytail and that last jumpsuit climbed into her patrol SUV, and both vehicles drove out toward the main ranch gate. I thought about that white Jeep Compass and wondered whether it was still holding vigil near the front gate and would see the hearse. Had that Sabino Arriaga character been listening to a police scanner? Had he known hours ago when I first made the nine-one-one call from the hilltop and the dispatcher sent Ponytail and the others to handle my announcement about a body at the summit?
When I left, I decided, I would take the long way, go out the far east gate where I’d first entered the ranch. I wanted no more contact with any Arriaga.
“Los muertos no hablan,” Oscar said, his voice so soft, he might not have meant for me to hear, and certainly not Ivy and her attorney way over at the dining tables, or Eliana, clattering in the kitchen.
My Spanish is weak, real weak. But I heard enough growing up, both in Texas and in Southern California, to have learned a few stock phrases such as the one Oscar had just proclaimed.
The dead don’t talk.
Chapter 18
A WEIRD HISSING SOUND OUTSIDE OF Ivy’s double front doors gave me pause. I turned the knob slowly. Stuckey was spraying Roundup. One edge of the flagstone was wet with the chemical, and the stink soaked the air. As I stepped out, I closed the door quick to keep the smell from drafting into the house and leaned down to put a hand of caution on Charley’s neck.
“Is Duffy gone?” I asked.
“Yeah, he left.” Stuckey looked at the way I was crouching to keep a hand on my dog. “Don’t worry. They don’t eat it.”
Probably true enough—I’d never touched my tongue to glypho-sate, but I’ve learned from my vet that many herbicides have a salty flavor that leads some horses to lick weed-killers that people spray on unwanted plants. Even if Charley didn’t lick or sniff the stink Stuckey was spraying, my dog didn’t need to get poison on his fur.
“Charley, heel.”
I needn’t have worried. Charley was properly glued to my left leg, perfectly on the side of the flagstone where Stuckey wasn’t working. I avoided looking where the hearse had been, and headed for my truck, where I grabbed a fresh shirt from the plastic bag in Ol’ Blue’s cab and headed for the bunkhouse.
Through the bunkhouse’s front window, I saw Gabe plunked down in a recliner in front of the television, watching a basketball game. He noticed me and tipped his straw cowboy hat, his smile polite, maybe with a touch of sadness or something else resigned.
“Can I come in?” I called through the glass.
Gabe came to the door, tipping his hat again in an automatic reflex as he waved me inside. He stepped back like a gentleman, shut the door behind me, turned the TV off, and said, “Stuckey’s an idiot, sometimes. He doesn’t mean to hurt anyone. Doesn’t mean any harm, he’s just a big clumsy dolt who doesn’t …”
As Gabe’s repeated speech trailed off, he removed his hat, ran a hand through his thick wavy hair, and kept the hat off this time. He gestured for me to sit in the well-used brown corduroy recliner and placed his hat on the floor upside down next to the worn cloth couch where he took a seat. “You decide what you’re going to do about Stuckey?”
“Oh, I … haven’t, I reckon.” I recalled how Gabe had protected Oscar this morning, gotten him out of the bunkhouse and into Ivy’s house, out from under the cops’ noses when it seemed to matter. He was trying to protect Stuckey now. He was a good guy.
I missed my Guy something fierce. Probably I could get a cell signal not too many miles from the ranch and give him a call before I started driving home in earnest. I said, “I asked Ivy if it’d be all right for me to take a shower.” That she hadn’t actually given me permission seemed a mere oversight. She had plenty on her plate.
“Oh,” Gabe said. “You leaving?”
“Pretty quick.”
He looked as pleased as if everyone else had forgotten his birthday and I’d just brought in a big cake. He rose again, taking his hat. “I’ll give you some privacy. Forgot to grab a few brewskis when I was out earlier anyway.”
He left, good as his word. I told Charley to wait for me in the living room and saw the Bronco pull away before I even made it to the bathroom.
***
The old farmhouse offered five doors, two to the right of the eat-in kitchen across from the living room, and three to the left. Between the two on the right was an alcove with a washer and dryer. One of the righthand doors was open, revealing a bedroom. I imagined Oscar scampering through it this morning, out the window, making an intermediate hiding stop in Ol’ Blue, and then a break for Ivy’s big house. I figured the closed door next to it was a bedroom, too.
All three doors to the left were closed. I opened and shut them all in quick succession, not being nosy, just having an unclear memory from my morning glimpse of the layout and now searching for the correct door. I’d have won the prize if I’d started on the right, but working from the left I found bedroom, bedroom, and then the bathroom on my third try.
The bunkhouse had a simple sort of bathroom, a small sink in a yard-long counter next to a commode next to a tub shower with a plastic curtain. It smelled like Irish Spring and had just a bit of black mold in the white corners where the shower wall rose from the tub.
The little sink counter held three shaving razors spread out: an electric, a plastic disposable, and a heavy, reusable model next to a pack of razor blades. I put the toilet lid down and stacked my clothes on it so I wouldn’t be moving the men’s stuff around. I made my shower fast, using the manly soap and two good pumps from the giant discount bottle of shampoo in the tub corner. Fresh water streaming over my body was a blessing. I hadn’t been soap-cleaned since Thursday night, when Guy and I had last taken a shower before bed. I dried off with the dirty T-shirt I’d been wearing since Friday and stopped dead when I thought I heard a door creak.
“Out in a minute,” I called, just in case it was one of the other fellows who might not expect a girl to be in the bunkhouse bathroom. “It’s Rainy. I’m in here.”
There was no response. I listened hard, heard nothing, tried to wipe the heebie-jeebies off my body as well as the water.
“Charley?” I pulled my underwear, jeans, and sports bra on quick as I could, the clothes pulling on my damp skin. Hearing him pad around outside the bathroom and slump against the door, a bit of yellow fur sticking under the threshold, let my shoulders sag with relief. I didn’t need to creep myself out.
But I opened the door as soon as I pulled the clean cotton T-shirt over my head, and knelt to hug my good dog, happy to have him climbing in my lap as I pulled dirty socks and boots back on.
“Anyone here?” I called out as Charley and I edged into the narrow hall.
Nope.
I opened the bedroom door beside me.
Bed made with a thick, navy blue comforter, single pillow on top. At the end of the bed was a blue plastic footlocker with a pair of work boots on top. I lifted the boots with one hand and the trunk lid with the other. Empty. I put the boots back. On top of the dresser was a Bible, in Spanish, and a receipt from La Tienda for wiring two hundred dollars to someone in Jalisco. Oscar’s room, I decided.
The next bedroom bore not a hint of personality. A neatly made bed, dust on the locker at the foot of the bed, dust on the little dresser. I lifted the locker’s lid and blinked at the contents, a set of colored pencils, charcoal drawing sticks, and a sketch pad. I opened the pad and looked at a drawing of my Charley, younger, eyeing sheep from a good vantage point, awaiting the next word from his shepherd.
I was in a dead man’s sometimes-bedroom. Most nights, he’d slept under
the stars, Charley at his side. Shepherds like Vicente Arriaga, well, they were a dying breed. Had Charley ever slept in this room? I looked at my dog for a hint of understanding. He looked back without blinking.
Sometimes, dogs are too stoic. I bowed my head, tapped my thigh for Charley to come, and left the room, closing the door behind us.
On the other side of the house, I stared into the open bedroom with the unmade bed. Two big pairs of worn shoes—plain, brown cowboy boots and a set of white high-top athletic shoes—poked out from underneath the dangling corner of the sheet. A denim jacket rested on the bed. The footlocker was secured with a small suitcase-type lock.
Was this Stuckey’s room or Gabe’s?
I considered the padlocked trunk at the foot of the bed, then opened the dresser’s top drawer. T-shirt, socks, underwear. Was I really going to search this whole room? Any second now, someone was going to come in here.
I stepped out and opened the last door to a messier version of the bedroom I’d just been in. The trunk at the foot of this bed bore no padlock.
I knelt and opened the trunk’s lid. Western shirts, jeans, socks. Hunting magazines, without a mailing label sticker on them. A big shiny revolver. I pushed it aside without touching it, shielding my fingertips with a blue yoked shirt. The pistol rested on underwear. Beneath the underwear lay something hard, long, and metal on top of a large, crinkled paper sack. I lifted the pile of tighty-whities and stared at the shoer’s tools resting on the brown paper. Nail cutters, two rasps, a crease nail puller, and a new pair of very nice track nippers—exactly what had been stolen from Ol’ Blue. Bingo.
***
When I grabbed the tools, wrapping them in the crackly old paper sack they were laying on, I was doing what came natural. Charley and I walked our sweet selves out of the bunkhouse, looking every direction as I carried my reclaimed tools out.
Right, no more police at all.
When it comes to police cars and hearses, gone is usually a good thing. Now, it was starting to feel a little lonely. Would I have run straight to Ponytail if she’d still been here?
If what Gabe said was true, it explained one or two things—the way Stuckey avoided me at first, heck, how even Charley avoided Stuckey, now that I thought about it.
But it wouldn’t explain everything, not by a long shot.
Stuckey wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. Anyone could have planted the tools in Stuckey’s locker. And then told me whatever story he wanted me to believe. And maybe that wasn’t Stuckey’s locker.
The Lexus fired up, and I glimpsed Ivy’s long blonde hair in the front passenger seat. They sped for the front gate without noticing me trying to flag them down.
I stowed my tools in Ol’ Blue, reflecting on how I couldn’t lock the topper since I only had the spare ignition key.
If Gabe was right, and it was Stuckey who’d jumped me and taken my truck and tools, what had Stuckey done with my keys?
The Bronco was at the end of the barn, not in its usual spot between Ol’ Blue and the bunkhouse.
Had Gabe driven away at all? Or was he just back that fast from his beer run?
Charley didn’t want to come down the barn aisle with me to face off against the voices I heard at the far, dark end, maybe in the forge room.
I went alone. I heard Stuckey’s voice first.
“Maybe we should tell the truth.”
That froze me, until I got the smarts to turn myself around. The police weren’t handy anymore. Ivy wasn’t here, either. Maybe Oscar and Eliana were up at the house, or maybe they were down there with Stuckey, trying to decide whether to come clean with someone about something.
Charley was right. I was in over my head. Quiet as we could, Charley and I piled into Ol’ Blue, got the key in the ignition, and glanced around like thieves while we waited for the glow plugs to tell me it was okay to start the truck.
But Ol’ Blue was dead. I wasn’t going anywhere.
Chapter 19
A BRIDLE WAS ALL I TOOK as I slipped into the paddock attached to Decker’s stall. He took the bit easily, and I brought him out through his paddock gate rather than through his stall and into the barn aisle. Gates don’t want to be stood on. It’s bad for the hinges. But in my haste, I used that paddock gate for a mounting block and landed lightly on the bare red back, felt his warmth beneath me. And I only hand waved to Charley that he should come along, because I wasn’t going to make more noise by calling to him or even slapping my thigh as we escaped.
In minutes, we were away, bareback in the last hour of the afternoon.
If anyone spied us or called out when we trotted off, I didn’t notice. I eased Decker down the ranch road eastward before striking up the hill, less in view of the house and the barn. In time, the route brought me to rustling sounds beyond the brush and of course it was Charley’s intensity that communicated the presence. Wild pigs? No, Charley wouldn’t have any interest in pigs, but sheep drew his fancy, sure enough.
Paying attention to my dog gets the best answers. A clearing in another hundred yards showed the flock. The donkey jack rested in the middle of the ewes, a king with his minions. The mule john some distance from them was much taller, darker, and slenderer than his sire, and interested in us as well. Too interested. It started following us, wanting to join up. I wheeled Decker away to discourage the mule. In another five minutes of riding east, I was in view of the neighboring ranch and the old cowboy who’d stopped his horse there.
He swung his hat in a big arc from one side of his horse to the other. I waved and rode on, trotting Decker up the hill with occasional walk breaks, but when I looked back, the horseman was flailing a yellow kerchief back and forth, the gloved hand reaching as high into the air as he could. That steady horse under him swiveled its ears with the commotion but didn’t dance or shift around a speck.
So, the rider was flagging me. I considered ignoring him but thought better of it. There’s a code. He needed to make talk. Maybe he was having trouble. I turned Decker and made for the fence between us, trotting to get the deed done while the rider waited on his side of the fence.
“Oh, it’s you,” the old rancher said as I got closer. “I thought from the distance it was one of the boys.”
“It’s me,” I said.
He racked one knee on his saddle’s near swell and I knew we were going to parlay if I’d take the time. His brown gelding cocked a hip and looked like it would wait all day. I wondered if this old cowboy before me had a herd of bays, browns, and chestnuts. He sure hadn’t given in to Ivy’s predilection of choosing flashy-colored horses.
The good old boy ahorseback pointed at shrubby manzanita on his side of the fence. A trench had been dug along the edge of the brush.
“Saw one of you slip through the fence this morning. When I come down, he … or she … was gone and this was there.”
The earth was scooped away under that manzanita, shoveled into a mound six or seven feet long. Too linear to blame it on wild pigs rooting.
“I got no problem defending my property.” His tone offered a challenge.
And that’s when I noticed the butt of a pistol on his right hip, the side farthest away from me.
Apparently, silence wasn’t the right response to his veiled threat, because his grew harsher. “Did you do that? Come digging around on my ranch?”
“No, sir. I just now saw you flagging me and rode over. Did you see what the person was wearing this morning?”
“Just saw the dark hat. I was pretty far away.”
“A black cowboy hat?”
“Baseball cap.” He spat and studied me some. “You lose your saddle?”
“I just … went for a quick ride.” I put a hand on Decker’s rump and looked back toward the Beaumont buildings, but we couldn’t see them from this part of the property. I was glad. It meant no one back at the barn or houses could see me. “You said something a bit odd to me yesterday, sir.”
“Did I?”
“Yessir. You were talking
about the hands on the Beaumont place, I reckon, and you called them by names I’ve never heard.”
“You’ve never heard of Laurel and Hardy?”
“Well, I have heard of them, but you used some other names.”
“Reese Trenton.”
I sat on Decker, blinking, lost. “Huh?”
“Howdy. I’m Reese Trenton.”
“Oh. Rainy Dale. Pleased to meet you. Mr. Trenton. About what you said yesterday …”
He looked at the western horizon for some time and finally came back with, “It doesn’t do to talk.”
Well, that was the end of that conversational branch.
Today, Trenton rode alone, without his dog, and he gazed at my Charley.
I cleared my throat. “That dog with you the other day, you said Fire was supposed to have been the sire. Is that what you were talking about, the thing that someone should have told Ivy Beaumont?”
He adjusted his horse to study Charley from the side then adapted to a new notion, calm as could be. “Damn, that is him. Excuse me, Miss Dale, but that’s the old herder’s dog, isn’t it?”
I felt the defensive possessiveness rise like a volcano through my core, ready to boil out my mouth. He’s mine now. He’s been mine the last two years. I didn’t want to argue for ownership with anyone ever again. I tried on Trenton’s nonchalance, looking at the sky as I said, “That’s my Charley dog.”
The truth was before me, this one slice of it anyways. When Trenton and I first met, I’d been looking at my dog’s son. If his dog were there now, sire and son would be face-to-face.
Imagine seeing your son. Oh, Charley, I thought. It’s a story for another day, but my, what I wouldn’t give. And how odd that the way it worked out, Trenton and I had met up along this fence line and our two dogs had come face-to-face. The rancher’s voice was still droning while I stared at my sainted old dog.
